Chapter 10

The knot of old fashioned politicians who call themselves Young England, are enamoured of 'graceful superstition.' Alarmed at the march of reason, and admirers of 'blind faith in mystery,' they sigh for a renewal of those times when no one doubted the propriety of drowning witches, or being touched for the king's evil. _Cui bono_ is the question repeatedly put to the proselytising Atheist by this modern antique class of persons, who cannot see the utility of destroying the vital principle of all religions. But if that principle is false, no sane man can doubt the expediency of proving it so. Falsehood may be useful to individuals, but cannot tend to the moral and political advancement of nations. Apologists of error find the presumed unfitness of their fellow creatures to appreciate truth a sufficient reason for not teaching it. To raise up the populace to their own intellectual level they deem impracticable, and therefore speak down to their lowest passions and prejudices: like Varro they contend there are some truths the vulgar had better think falsehoods, and many falsehoods they had better think truths. The consequences of such 'moral swindling' are everywhere visible: on all sides superstition, wild, unreasoning, senseless superstition rears its hateful front, and vomits forth anathema on the friend of progress, humanity, and social justice. Look at Ireland: see to what a Pandaemonium superstition has converted 'the first flower of the land and first gem of the sea.' In that unhappy country may be seen seven or eight millions of people cheated, willingly defrauded of their substance, by a handful of designing priests, who, dead to shame, erect the most stupid credulity into exalted virtue --battle in support of ignorance because knowledge is incompatible with their 'blood-cemented pyramid of greatness,' and to aggrandise themselves, perpetuate the vilest as well as most palpable delusions that ever assumed the mask of divine truth. Daniel O'Connell may object to have them called 'surpliced ruffians,' not so the philosopher, who sees in pious fraud on a gigantic scale, the worst species of ruffianism that ever disgraced the earth.

These are no new tangled or undigested notions. From age to age the wisest among men have abhorred and denounced superstition. It is true that only a small section of them treated religion as if _necessarily_ superstition, or went quite so far as John Adams, who said, _this would be the best of all possible worlds if there were no religion in it_. But an attentive reading of ancient and modern philosophical books has satisfied the Author of this Apology that through all recorded time, religion has been _tolerated_ rather than _loved_ by great thinkers, who had _will_, but not _power_ to wage successful war upon it. Gibbon speaks of Pagan priests who, 'under sacerdotal robes, concealed the heart of an Atheist.' Now, these priests were also the philosophers of Rome, and it is not impossible that some modern philosophical priests, like their Pagan prototypes, secretly despise the religion they openly profess. Avarice, and lust of power, are potent underminers of human virtue. The mighty genius of Bacon was not proof against them, and he who deserves to occupy a place among 'the wisest and greatest' has been 'damned to eternal fame' as the, 'meanest of mankind.'

Nor are avarice and lust of power the only base passions under the influence of which men, great in intellect, have given the lie to their own convictions, by calling that religion which they knew to be rank superstition. Fear of punishment for writing truth is the grand cause why their books contain so little of it. If Bacon had openly treated Christianity as mere superstition, will any one say that his life would have been worth twenty-four hours purchase. He lived at a time when heresy, to say nothing of Atheism, was _rewarded_ with death. Bacon was not the man to be ambitious of such a reward. Few great geniuses are. Philosophers seldom covet martyrdom, and hence it came to pass that few of them would run the terrible risk of provoking bigotted authority by the 'truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth' concerning religion. In our own day the smell of a faggot would be too much for the nostrils of, that still unamiable but somewhat improved animal, called the public. One delightful as well as natural consequence is, that philosophical writers do ever and anon deal much more freely with religion than its professors are _disposed_, though _compelled_, to tolerate. But, even now, with all our boasted liberty of conscience, not one in one thousand of those who _think_ truth about religion dare express it. Philosophy still exhibits, in deference to popular prejudice and fanaticism, what the great French maximist defined as 'the homage that vice pays to virtue.' Such is the rule to which, most fortunately for the pause of truth, there are many, and some splendid, exceptions. One of these is worth citing not only because of its intrinsic merit, but because the thing to be cited includes an opinion of religion, and a marked distinction between what is _pious_ and what is honest, that calls for especial notice. The exception referred to is a paragraph from a paper on Saint Simonianism, written by Colonel Thompson, and originally published in the Westminster Review, of April 1, 1832, containing these remarkable words:--'The world wants _honest_ law-givers, not pious ones. If piety will make men honest, let them favour us with the honesty and keep the piety for God and their own consciences. There never was a man that brought piety upon the board when honesty would do, without its being possible to trace a transfusion in the shape of money or money's worth, from his neighbour's pocket into his. The object of puzzling the question with religion is clear. You cannot quarrel for sixpences with the man who is helping you the way to heaven. The man who wants your sixpences, therefore, assumes a religious phraseology, which is cant, and cant is fraud, and fraud is dishonesty, and the dishonest should have a mark set on them.'

There is an old story about a certain lady who said to her physician, 'Doctor, what is your religion?' 'My religion, madam,' replied the Doctor, 'is the religion of all sensible men.' 'What kind of religion is that?' said the lady. 'The religion, madam,' quoth the Doctor, 'that no sensible man will tell.'

This doctor may be taken as a type of the class of shrewd people who despise religion, but will say nothing about it, lest by so doing they give a shock to prejudice, and thus put in peril certain professional or other emoluments. Too sensible to be pious, and too cautious to be honest, they must be extremely well paid ere they will incur the risk attendant upon a confession of irreligious faith. Like Colonel Thompson, they know the world needs _honest_ lawgivers not pious ones, but unlike him, they won't say so. Animated by a vile spirit of accommodation, their whole sum of practical wisdom can be told in four words--BE SILENT AND SAFE. They are amazed at the 'folly' of those who make sacrifices at the shrine of sincerity; and while sagacious enough to perceive that religion is a clumsy political contrivance, are not wanting in the prudence which dictates at least a warning conformity to prevailing prejudices.

None have done more to perpetuate error than these time serving 'men of the world,' for instead of boldly attacking it, they preserve a prudent silence which bigots do not fail to interpret as consent. Mosheim says, [90:1] 'The simplicity and ignorance of the generality in those times (fifth century) furnished the most favourable occasion for the exercise of fraud; and the impudence of imposters, in contriving false miracles, was artfully proportioned to the credulity of the vulgar; while the sagacious and the wise, who perceived these cheats, were overawed into silence by the dangers that threatened their lives and fortunes, if they should expose the artifice. Thus,' continues this author, 'does it generally happen, when danger attends the discovery and the profession of the truth, the prudent are _silent_, the multitude _believe_, and impostors _triumph_.'

Beausobre, too, in his learned, account of Manicheism reads a severe lesson to the 'sensible _dummies_, who, under the influence of such passions as _fear_ and _avarice_, will do nothing to check the march of superstition, or relieve their less 'sensible,' but more honest, fellow-creatures from the weight of its fetters. After alluding to an epistle written by that 'demi-philosopher,' Synesius, when offered by the Patriarch the Bishopric of Ptolemais, [91:1] Beausobre says, 'We see in the history that I have related a kind of hypocrisy, which, perhaps, has been far too common in all times. It is that of ecclesiastics, who not only do not say what they think, but the reverse of what they think. Philosophers in their closet, when out of them they are content with fables, though they know well they are fables. They do more; they deliver to the executioner the excellent men who have said it. How many Atheists and profane persons have brought holy men to the stake under the pretext of heresy? Every day, hypocrites consecrate the host and cause it to be adored, although firmly convinced as I am that it is nothing more than a piece of bread.'

Whatever may be urged in defence of such execrable duplicity, there can be no question as to its anti-progressive tendency. The majority of men are fools, and if such 'sensible' politicians as our Doctor and the double doctrinising persecuting ecclesiastics, for whose portraits we are indebted to Mosheim and Beausobre, shall have the teaching of them, fools they are sure to remain. Men who dare not be 'mentally faithful' to themselves may obstruct, but cannot advance the interests of truth. Colonel Thompson is right. In legislation, in law, in all the relations of life, we want _honesty_, not piety. There is plenty of piety, and to spare, but of honesty--sterling, bold, uncompromising honesty--even the best regulated societies can boast a very small stock. The men best qualified to raise the veil under which truth lies concealed from vulgar gaze, are precisely the men who fear to do it. Oh, shame upon ye self-styled philosophers, who in your closets laugh at 'our holy religion,' and in your churches do them reverence. Were your bosoms warmed by one spark of generous wisdom, _silence_ on the question of religion would be broken, the multitude cease to _believe_, and imposters to _triumph_. But the desire to enlighten others is lost in regard for yourselves, and what Mrs. Grundy may say, is sufficient to frighten ye from the enunciation truth.

Is superstition no evil? Is there nothing hateful, nothing against which unceasing war should be waged, in the degradation of those unhappy persons who worship idols of their own imagination? Can error be fraught with good and truth with evil, that we should shrink from doing justice to both? Everywhere are learnedly ignorant or basely cunning men, who would scare us from dealing with religious error, as all error deserves to be dealt with, by high-sounding jargon about the danger of freeing vulgar minds from the wholesome restraints of certain antiquated beliefs. Themselves essentially vulgar by habit and in feeling, their estimate of human tendencies is of the meanest, the most grovelling description. Measuring the _chaff_ of other men by their own bushel, they arrive at the pious but false conclusion that without fear of God there can be no genuine love of man, and that without faith in some one of our five hundred and odd true religions, all the thoughts of our hearts would be evil continually. They insist upon it that the 'absolute Atheist,' if virtuous, is so by accident not design; that he can neither love truth, justice, nor his neighbour, except by sheer luck, and that, if bad as his principles, would cut the throat of every man, woman, and child who might have the misfortune to fall in his way. They argue as if none can think good thoughts or purposely perform good acts unless so far eaten up by superstition as always to keep in view the probable _rewards_, or equally probable _vengeance_ of some supernatural Being. Faith in human goodness, irrespective of reward and punishment, either here or hereafter, sophists of this bigotted class have literally none. Influenced by fanaticism and stimulated by cupidity they let slip no opportunity of dealing out upon such as oppose their hideous doctrines the choicest sort of vituperative blackguardism. The reader knows this is no idle or ill-considered charge. He has seen at the commencement of this Apology verbatim extracts, affecting the moral character of Atheists, from books written by pious Christians, so utterly disgusting that only those in whom every sense of delicacy, truth, and justice has been obliterated, by a worse than savage creed, can peruse them without horror.

Not inaptly, we conceive, has religion been likened to a madman's robe, for the least puff of reason parts it and shows the wearer's nakedness. This view of religion explains the otherwise inexplicable fact that eminent piety is usually associated with eminent imbecility. Such men as Newton, Locke, and Bacon are not remembered and reverenced on account of their faith. By all but peddling narrow-thoughted bigots they are held in honour for their science, their matter-of-fact philosophy; not their puerile conceits about 'airy nothings,' to which half crazed supernaturalists have assigned 'a local habitation and a name.' Lord Bacon laid down principles so remote from pious, that no man can understand and philosophise in strict accordance with them, if he fears to embrace Atheism. From his _Novum Organum Scientiarum_ may be extracted an antidote to the poison of superstition, for it is there we are told that _aiming at divine things through the human, breeds only an odd mixture of imaginations_. There we are told that _Man, the servant and interpreter of Nature, can only understand and act in proportion as he observes or contemplates the order of nature--more he cannot do._ There too is set down the wise lesson that truth is justly to be called the daughter, not of Authority, but Time. Bacon abhorred superstition. He denounced it as the 'confusion of many states,' and for a 'religious philosopher' wrote most liberally of Atheism. No one who has read his Essay on Superstition can doubt that he thought it a far greater evil than Atheism. Any man who should now write as favourably of Godlessness would be suspected of a latitudinarianism quite inimical to the genius and spirit of 'true religion.' The orthodox much prefer false piety to no piety at all. Mere honesty does not satisfy them. They insist on faith in their chimerical doctrines and systems, as 'the basis of all excellence.' To please them we must sacrifice truth as it is in Nature, at the shrine of truth as it is in Jesus, and believe what derives no sanction from experience. Bacon taught us to 'interpret nature,' and that 'aiming at the divine through the human breeds only an odd mixture of imaginations;' but these hair-brained fanatics who would have us believe him _one of them_, care little for natural knowledge, and affect contempt for all that concerns most intimately our 'earthly tabernacles.' Bacon taught us to _consider as suspicious every relation, which depends in any degree upon religion_, [93:1] but wiser than that 'wisest of mankind,' our _real_ Christians execrate such teaching, and will have nothing _good_ to do with those who walk in the light and honestly act in the spirit of it. How dare they then pretend to sympathise with the opinions of Bacon? It is true he announced himself willing to swallow all the fables of the Talmud or the Koran, rather than believe this Almighty frame without a Mind; but who is now prepared to determine the precise sense in which our illustrious philosopher used the words 'without a mind.' We believe his own interpretation altogether unchristian. 'To palter in a double sense' has ever been the practice of philosophers who, like Bacon, knew more than they found it discreet to utter. But with all their discretion, Locke, Milton, and even Newton did not succeed in establishing an orthodox reputation. The passages from Locke given in this Apology do at least warrant our opinion that it may fairly be doubted whether he was either a Christian or a Theist. Had he been disposed to avow Atheistical sentiments, he could not have done so, except at the imminent hazard of his life. Speculative philosophers do not usually covet the crown of martyrdom, and are seldom unwilling to fling down a few religious sops to the Cerberus of popular bigotry. It was the boast of Synesius, Bishop of Ptolemais, that when communing with himself, he was always a philosopher, but when dealing with the mass of mankind, he was always a priest. Who knows how far John Locke followed the _safe_ example. That he was a materialist his writings prove; and every far sighted Theist will admit that Atheism is the natural termination of Materialism. John Locke may have been a devout believer in 'thingless names,' to which no merely human creature can attach clear and distinct ideas: he may have thought the Bible had one of the said 'thingless names' for its author, salvation for its end, and truth without mixture of error for its matter; though very probable he affected such belief, to shield himself from persecution; but it is quite certain, and may be affirmed without injustice, that he should to have professed Atheism; for his own rule of philosophising is inconsistent with belief in any thing supernatural. While living he was often charged with Atheism, by opponents who understood the tendencies of his philosophy better than he appeared to do himself. But the Author of this Apology has no such mean opinion of John Locke, as to suppose him ignorant that Materialism, as he taught it, is totally irreconcileable with that God, and that Religion in which he professed to believe. Belief in inconceivable entities cannot be reconciled with disbelief of all entities, save those of which we can frame clear and distinct ideas. Nor is it easy to persuade oneself that Locke could so far have done violence to his own principles as to feel 'lively faith' in a 'science' with no other aim, end, or ground-work, than 'the knowledge and attributes of the unknown.'

By a late writer in the Edinburgh Review, we are told that 'some of the opinions avowed by Milton,' were so 'heterodox,' as to have 'excited considerable amazement.' We can scarcely conceive, says this writer, that any one could have read his Paradise Lost without suspecting him of heterodoxy; nor do we think that any reader acquainted with the history of his life, ought to be much startled by his opinions on marriage. The opinions which he expressed regarding the nature of the Deity, the eternity of matter, and the observation of the Sabbath, might, we think, have caused more just surprise. [95:1] Add to this good reader, Dr. Johnson's statement, ('Lives of the Poets,' p. 134, Art. Milton,) that in the distribution of his (Milton's) hours _there was no hour of prayer, either solitary or with his household_; and then come, if you can, to the conclusion that he was a Christian.

The piety of Newton we are not prepared to dispute. It is certain he manufactured for himself a God, inasmuch as to space he ascribed the honor of being His sensorium. It is equally clear that he believed Christianity a divine system, inasmuch as he wrote, and rushed into print with, a lot of exquisite nonsense about the exquisitely nonsensical Apocalypse. But we defy pietists to ferret out of his religious writings, any argument in defence of religion, not absolutely beneath contempt; the best of them are execrably bad--mere ravings of a disordered and o'erwrought intellect. 'The sublime Newton,' said D'Holbach, 'is but a child when he quits physical science, to lose himself in the imaginary regions of theology.' He failed, nevertheless, to achieve the favour, or escape the wrath, of thorough-going theologians who were in ecstacies at his childishness, but bitterly detested him, as they detested every man who had the audacity to open up new, and widen old fields, of investigation; to reject chimera and hold fast by fact in the pursuit of knowledge, and to teach a series of scientific truths, no ability can reconcile with the philosophy (?) of Jesus and Moses, who, according to wise Dr. Epps, never intended to teach man NATURAL SCIENCE, which he defines to be 'God in Creation;' but 'came to teach, in referring to natural events, SCIENTIFIC UNTRUTHS. [95:2]

The Author hopes that the opinions here advanced in reference to what may be named the Argument from 'Authority,' as contradistinguished from 'Time,' will make obvious to Christians themselves, that it is an unsafe argument, an argument which, like the broken reed, not only fails, but cruelly wounds the hand that rests upon it. Much evidence _has been_, and much more _can be_ adduced to show that no prudent, well-informed Christian will say anything about the sanction lent to Christianity, or religion of any sort, by the writings of Newton, Milton, Bacon, and Locke. By admirers of such sanction, (?) this, our Apology for Atheism will, no doubt, be rejected with indignant contempt, but we venture to predict for it better treatment at the hands of those who are convinced that _untruth_ can no more be _scientific_, than truth can be _unscientific_, and that belief, whether in the God of Nature, the God of Scripture, or the Scripture itself, opposed to Philosophy, must needs be opposed to Reason and Experience.

[ENDNOTES]

[4:1] 25th of November, 1845.

[5:1] Vide 'Time's' Commissioner's Letter on the Condition of Ireland,' November 28, 1843.

[10:1] Essay 'of the Academical or Sceptical Philosophy.'

[11:1] See the Creeds of R. Owen and R. Carlile in No. 14 of the Promptor.

[11:2] 'Essay of the Idea of Necessary Connexion.'

[11:3] 'Essay of a Providence and a Future State.'

[12:1] Critical remarks on Lord Brougham's 'Lives of Men of Letters and Science, who flourished in the time of George III.'--The Times, Wednesday, October I, 1845.

[13:1] History of American Savages.

[13:2] Appendix the Second to 'Plutarchus and Theophrastus on Superstition.'

[13:3] Philosophy of History.

[15:1] See a Notice of Lord Brougham's Political Philosophy, in the number for April, 1845.

[20:1] 'Apology for the Bible,' page 133.

[20:2] Unusquisque vestrum non cogitate prius se debere Deos nosse quam colere.

[27:1] See a curious 'Essay on Nature.' Printed for Badcock and Co., 2, Queen's Head Passage, Paternoster Row. 1807.

[31:1] Elements of Materialism, chapter I.

[32:1] Discussion on the Existence of God, between Origen Bachelor and Robert Dale Owen.

[37:1] Answer to Dr. Priestly on the existence of God, by a Philosophical Unbeliever.

[40:1] Treatise on Human Nature.

[41:1] This sexing is a stock receipt for mystification.--_Colonel Thompson._

[44:1] The Rev. J.E. Smith.

[46:1] 'An Address on Cerebral Physiology and Materialism,' delivered to the Phrenological Association in London, June 20, 1842.

[49:1] No 40 of 'The Shepherd.'

[50:1] 'The Shepherd,' Vol. i., page 40.

[52:1] Extracts from an able letter to the Editor of 'The Shepherd,' in No. 23 of that periodical.

[54:1] Novum Organon.

[56:1] Principia Mathmatica, p. 528. Lond. edit., l726.

[63:1] See a pamphlet, price Sixpence, entitled 'Paley refuted in his own words,' by G.J. Holyoake.'

[63:2] Lessing.

[64:1] See "Extract from an unpublished work, entitled the 'Refutation of Deism,'" by the late P.B. Shelley--given in the Model Republic of May 1st, 1813.

[68:1] 'Westminster Review' for May, 1843.